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Destruction of the Jupiter Floating Continent
The Destruction of the Jupiter Floating Continent was a battle of the Garmillas-Earth War fought on and around a Garmillas floating continent within the atmosphere of Jupiter. The battle was brief and involved few ships, but it allowed the United Nations Cosmo Navy a chance to test the space battleship Yamato's most devastating weapon, a wave motion gun, and seriously weakened Garmillas plans for re-engineering the environment of Earth. Prelude For much of the nearly eight previous years of the war, the Great Garmillas Empire waged a long-distance siege of Earth that gradually drove all native life toward extinction. By doing so, the empire hoped to achieve the long-term goal of "Garmillasforming" the planet into a biosphere that was ideally suited to supporting the Garmillan people and other forms of life from the imperial homeworld. The empire moved one of its floating continents to the solar system in support of this effort, hiding it from detection inside the atmosphere of the gas giant Jupiter. Like other floating continents, this was a massive supply nursery of native Garmillas flora that would be seeded on Earth, starting with species that were strong enough to tolerate the radioactive wasteland created by the siege ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "O Teresa, Cry for Dessler!"). In February 2199, the UN Cosmo Navy launched a new warship equipped with advanced alien technology secretly given to humanity, a wave motion engine, which would allow it to achieve faster-than-light warp travel and to power a weapon more powerful than anything used during the war. Soon after launching from Earth, the space battleship Yamato was ordered by its commanding officer, Admiral Juzo Okita, to fly to a point in space near Mars and make a test warp to the orbit of Uranus. Yamato began the test successfully, but an unexpected object crossed into the ship's path and it automatically changed course, flying into Jupiter's immense gravity well and dropping out of warp as a result ("Toward a Sea of Stars", "Escape from the Jupiter Sphere"). Combat on the Floating Continent With its wave motion engine temporarily offline and the planet's gravity pulling it in, Yamato's sensors detected an enormous object in the upper atmosphere, a floating rock roughly the size of Australia. The ship's helmsman managed to maneuver Yamato and come to rest in a liquid water lake on the surface of the floating landmass, which was surprisingly covered with lush vegetation. The crew immediately commenced repairs and gathered plant and atmosphere samples, and the chief science officer correctly hypothesized the Garmillan origin and purpose of the floating continent. : Before repairs could be completed, the commander of the floating continent reported the arrival of the Earth ship to the Pluto Frontline Base. Colonel Walke Shultz ordered three destroyers and a heavy cruiser to attack, with the cruiser circling around from the opposite direction. Yamato had only limited power to feed to its shock cannons against the attackers. Okita ordered three cannon salvos that cut the cruiser in half and crumpled the lead destroyer, and waited for the other two to draw closer. The remaining destroyers fired torpedoes, which were intercepted by Yamato's point defense. Once they were within range, Yamato fired Type-3 shells from its shock cannons, crippling and crashing one of the destroyers, and leaving the other to retreat ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere"). Firing the Wave Motion Gun Its wave motion engine online once more, Yamato lifted off from the floating continent and came about to face it at a distance of 23,000 kilometers. Okita decided that there would be no better opportunity and ordered the first use of the ship's wave motion gun, targeted at the heat signature of an enemy facility in a basin deep within the interior of the continent. Despite Okita's intention to eliminate only the Garmillas base, the gun's blinding blue beam vaporized the retreating destroyer and tore the entire continent apart with ease, leaving nothing but a field of debris and dust and a massive black scar spreading across the cloud tops of the gas giant planet ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere"). Rather than a spreading black spot on the face of Jupiter, the manga adaptation of ''Space Battleship Yamato 2199 depicts a deep and elongated concave distortion of the planet's atmosphere, marking the path of the wave motion gun beam.'' Aftermath With the destructive capability of the wave motion gun ascertained, Okita and many of the Yamato senior staff concluded that it should be used only on a limited basis. The admiral declined to use the weapon in the ship's assault on the primary Garmillas base on Pluto two days later, a move which would have likely destroyed the entire dwarf planet. On Pluto, Colonel Shultz studied footage of the black scar on Jupiter's face caused by Yamato's wave motion gun. Although he did not know the nature of the new weapon, he wisely understood that this human ship would have to be approached differently ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field"). He fell back on his cautious instincts and eventually launched an unconventional tactic against Yamato ("The Trap on All Sides"). Japanese language information 木星浮遊大陸の破壊 Mokusei Fuyū Tairiku no Hakai Category:Events (2199) Category:Battles (2199) Category:Garmillas-Earth War